1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus, and in particular to an image forming apparatus and a control method therefor which are capable of limiting the range of operations that can be performed by a service person during maintenance, as well as a storage medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
An image forming apparatus usually has an image processing application for performing an image reading function, a printing function, a communication function, and the like. A service person (skilled person) visits a customer to perform maintenance of the image forming apparatus.
The image forming apparatus has a large number of setting items, and the service person corrects malfunctions of the image forming apparatus and adjusts motion of the image forming apparatus by referring to setting values of multiple maintenance setting items required for maintenance work among the large number of setting items and changing the setting values of the maintenance setting items.
Information on the plurality of maintenance setting items is divided broadly into two; one is, for example, maintenance information such as image adjustment values, license values, and screen display settings which are used by a manufacturer in maintenance, and the other is, for example, user resource information such as history information on HDD clearing and network-related setting values. The maintenance information and the user resource information are required to be managed while being monitored by a manufacturer and a user, respectively.
As for management of the user resource information, there has been known a technique to, at the time of using an image forming apparatus, perform user authentication and check user authorities using a user management function contained in the image forming apparatus, and based on the checking result, restrict use of the image forming apparatus (see, for example, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 2011-123898).
However, the conventional user authentication technique for maintenance work is not good enough in terms of restrictions on manipulations of maintenance setting items by a service person. For example, in an image forming apparatus of a user who has a maintenance contract, a service person is allowed to manipulate the user resource information mentioned above, and usually, the service person performs maintenance work so that the user can use the image forming apparatus in a more comfortable manner. However, there may be cases where a malicious person pretends to be a service person and manipulates user resource information without user's intent, and as a result, the security of the image forming apparatus could not be maintained.